Our world is changing. And our kids need to be aware of all of the potential options available after high school so they can feel informed and empowered to make the choice that is best for them.
Through interviews with experts in business and education, I will shine a light on the many career opportunities that may or may not require a four-year college degree. During each episode, we will be exploring the latest trends shaping the job opportunities of today and tomorrow. We will investigate both traditional and non-traditional paths to careers including creative arts, skilled trades, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, military, “new collar” tech, freelancing, gap year programs and more. And with that, I welcome you to the High School Hamster Wheel Podcast!
Thanks for being here. I’m so excited to get this podcast started. It’s a passion project for me and I’m really happy that you’re here with me. This topic may be controversial for some and that’s okay. I think it’s a conversation we need to be having, uncomfortable or not. So let me start by saying this. In terms of preparing our kids for their future, I believe our system is broken. Our kids are burnt out. They’re stressed, obsessed, and in some cases depressed. The message that they’ve heard since they were old enough to hold a pencil is that the perfect formula for success is one thing: get good grades, go to the best college, choose a lucrative career and earn a lot of money. Just do all this and you’ll be successful. I call BS. As a mom of two teenagers, 13 and 15, we are already caught up on this high school hamster wheel.
A college degree doesn’t guarantee you a successful future
I believe it’s time to disrupt the education system as we know it. We need to stop asking our kids where they will go to college and replace it with “Do you want to go to college?” We need to stop asking them what they want to be when they grow up and instead ask them “What do you want your life to look like? And then how do you think you might get there?” Yes, these are tough questions, but if we as parents don’t ask them, who will? I’ve been doing a lot of informal research. I’ve been chatting with parents at events and around town. Almost every parent I speak with has a story about their kids. Some graduated without a job, some are overwhelmed in student loan debt, some are even living back at home and not sure how to find a job. The truth is that a college degree does not guarantee you a successful future.
Let’s allow our kids to pursue their own dreams
It’s an epidemic and I truly believe that our kids are not to blame. They bought into the dream that’s been whispered into their ear since they were young. Go to college and it will all work out from there. What if we started whispering a different message into our kids’ ears? What if we told them they could take any path they wanted to take? Pursue any kind of future they dream about, with or without college? As someone who graduated high school ranked pretty much right smack in the middle of my class, if I’m being honest, I never really worked that hard in high school. I got good grades, I did well on tests, I checked all those boxes. But at 17 years old, I had no idea what I wanted my life to look like, so like everyone else, I started college and shortly thereafter I quit.
My journey to a successful career…without a 4 year degree
I went to work, worked for a while, and then started college again as a part-time student. After 10 years, I finally completed my associate’s degree. In today’s world by society’s standards, I would likely be judged as an underachiever, as someone who would never find success in the world except that I did. My problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to work hard. The truth was that I didn’t want to spend four years in college studying something that I didn’t care about, so I took another path. I landed a job from the day I turned 16 and continued to work part-time all the way through college. Then after graduating with my two-year associate’s degree, I continued to work hard, really hard. I found my way into corporate America and spent the next 20 years in a successful and lucrative career with Fortune 100 companies like Nestle, Warner Brothers, and Disney.
We need to give our kids MORE choices, not less
Yes, it took me 10 years out of high school to figure out what I wanted to do, but that’s not uncommon. Late bloomers are all around us and we need to start giving our kids permission to be late bloomers. They don’t have to have it all figured out at the young age of 17. Heck, most of us don’t figure it out until middle age or later. Rather than narrowing their choices into one college prep tunnel, we should be focusing on providing them with more options, not less. We are raising the bar every year and our kids are crumbling under the pressure. The rates of teen depression, anxiety, and attempted suicide are at an all-time high. Why? Because from the day they step foot on a high school campus, they’re being told to build their resume, enroll in AP classes, boost their grade point average, increase their SAT scores. That’s a great recipe if in fact your path is predetermined as getting into the best college possible, but if you’re on another path, that recipe doesn’t work.
Colleges are setting unrealistic expectations
In our current state, our kids are trying to meet unrealistic goals that are being defined by the big institutions. Since when did a 4.0 GPA become not enough? At what point did they, whomever they are, decide that our children should be taking AP classes from the age of 14? When is enough actually enough? Sure, our kids are allowed to choose their extracurriculars, but let’s be honest, they are encouraged to pick those activities that look best on a college application. Kids who want to go to college and have a specific career in mind that requires college should go to college. I don’t have anything against four-year college programs if that’s the right path for you. If you want to be an accountant, go to college. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, go to college. But what if a teenager knew that she could pursue a career that would make her happy and give her job fulfillment while making a decent living, rather than incurring crazy student loan debt for a degree that she has no intention of using? Shouldn’t she have the chance to do that?
The truth about college graduation rates
Okay, let’s do some math. Are you aware that only seven out of ten kids attend college after graduating high school? And of those seven that do attend, only three will complete a four-year degree. That means just about 30% of high school grads will actually earn a four-year college degree. But wait, there’s more. Of the 30% of high school students that do graduate with a degree, only about half of those will actually work in a field where their degree is required or applicable. So where does that leave us?
Our schools aren’t helping kids explore ALL of their
options
I’ll tell you, it leaves us in our current state where most high schools are using 80% of their resources to serve about 20% of their kids. So what about all those kids? All 80% of them that either won’t go to college or won’t finish college. What’s being done to serve them? How can we help them figure out their next steps out of high school? And while we’re on the subject, let’s talk about student loans. I read an alarming statistic this week. As of 2018 a total of 44.2 million borrowers now owe a total of over $1.5 trillion in student loan debt. 1.5 trillion. Let’s be honest, many of those that are in debt will be paying it back for more years than they can count. Student loans aside, I believe that we as parents have a responsibility to help our kids prepare for their future no matter what their future is. Somewhere along the way we went off course and lost our way to helping our kids find the path that’s best for them.
I have two teenagers. One is a sophomore in high school
and the other is in eighth grade. Eighth grade, meaning he’s still in middle school.
Yet he was placed this year in a pre-AP history class. Pre-AP. He’s 13 years
old. At what point does the hamster wheel stop spinning? It’s our
responsibility to give our kids the choice to jump off the hamster wheel and
choose another path. And if they don’t know what that path is, I believe it’s
our job to help them explore what their options are.
Let’s keep this important conversation going
I am passionate about this topic, obviously, and I’m excited to get this conversation going on a bigger scale. In each episode, I’ll be interviewing experts in their field and leaders in education to talk about the latest trends shaping the opportunities of today and tomorrow. We will investigate non-traditional paths to careers, including creative arts, skilled trades, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, military, new collar tech, freelancing, gap years and more. If a teen in your life is looking to explore their options after high school, please continue with me on this journey as we help our kids hop off the high school hamster wheel. I welcome feedback from you about what you’d like to hear on this podcast and how I can make it more useful to you and your teens. And be sure to subscribe so new episodes will be delivered to you as soon as they’re available. Thanks for joining me here on the High School Hamster Wheel Podcast.